Geriatric Psychiatry Fellowship

Welcome to the Department of Geriatric Psychiatry at University of
Virginia. Thank you for your interest in the fellowship program
in Geriatric Psychiatry. Our program offers unique experiences to
further your education and clinical skills in the treatment of our
elderly community. Our one-year program is split up into two
major rotations: nursing homes in and around Charlottesville, VA
and our inpatient geriatric unit at UVA. Other rotations include
ECT, geriatric inpatient consults, geriatric internal medicine,
neurology clinic, outpatient psychiatry, and working with Adult
Protective Services (APS). There is also a required research
project and several of our fellows have presented posters or publish
manuscripts based on their research projects.

Here is a brief description of each rotation:

Nursing
Homes:As
a geriatric fellow, you will be seeing patients independently in some
of our local nursing homes and assisted living facilities. You
will have two to three mornings per week to see patients independently
who will then be discussed and staffed with one of the attending
physicians later in the week. Fellows also travel with one of the
attending physicians to nursing homes to see patients together, which
provides an opportunity for more supervision and education.
Occasionally there will be PGY-4 psychiatry residents or medical
students accompanying the fellows on these visits.

Geriatric Inpatient
Unit:UVA offers a small
unit for geriatric patients (up to 6 beds). During this rotation,
you will gain experience supervising residents and acting as an
Attending-in-training while seeing geriatric inpatients.

Electroconvulsive therapy
(ECT):Fellows have the
opportunity to work with our ECT attending to provide this treatment to
patients.

Adult Protective Services
(APS):This is a unique
and very informative experience for our fellows. Fellows
will rotate one afternoon weekly for 4 months with Adult Protective
Services of Albemarle County. This rotation provides fellows with
the opportunity to travel to homes with social workers who are
investigating cases of elderly abuse, neglect, or
exploitation.

Geriatric Medicine
Clinic:For one afternoon
weekly for four months, you will work with one of UVA’s geriatric
internal medicine specialists to gain a better understanding and
experience with medical problems in the elderly in a nursing home
setting.

Neurology
Clinic:For one afternoon
weekly for four months, our fellows work in one of UVA’s many neurology
clinics. Fellows have recently been rotating in a Movement
Disorders Clinic where they see and treat patients of all ages with
various movement disorders. This clinic is supervised by
attending physicians in the UVA Neurology Department.

Outpatient
Clinic:Fellows rotate in
a geriatric outpatient psychiatry clinic for one afternoon weekly for
the duration of the year. During this experience, fellows will see both
new and established patients over age 60. One of our attending
physicians supervises the clinic and is available for staffing and
supervision during clinic hours.

Journal
Club:Once monthly,
fellows are required to select and present a relevant journal article
in geriatric psychiatry to a small group of geriatric psychiatry
faculty and other geriatric psychiatry fellows over lunch.

Supervision:Supervision is provided in many
forms. As attending physicians are required to see any patients
with Medicare as their insurance provider, there is much opportunity to
present and staff patients with faculty throughout nursing homes and
the outpatient clinic. UVA also provides fellows with additional
supervision with one of the geriatric psychiatry faculty
members.